Memento Mori

Cheery title, no? But I thought the Latin phrase meaning “remember you must die” would be a fitting title for Lent, a week before Good Friday.

I just finished Audrey Niffeneger's most recent novel, Her Fearful Symmetry. Niffenegger is a Chicago resident but also spends time in London, where she is a guide at storied Highgate Cemetery. (So yes, she lives my dream life.)  Highgate and its living and dead residents figure significantly in the novel, which I enjoyed very much despite the truly strange ending.

I don’t know Niffenegger, but she appears to be a kindred spirit, as I also adore cemeteries. When I lived in Philadelphia, I spent hours happily searching for my Gregory ancestors in Laurel Hill, a lush, rambling cemetery overlooking the Schuylkill River and Boathouse Row.  (Okay, maybe I wasn't so happy the whole time.  It was a very large cemetery and the map was vague as to the exact location of my family's plot.)

Laurel Hill boasts a number of lovely mausoleums, some still with the original Tiffany stained glass windows.  The cemetery is famous for the Warner monument, an Alexander Milne Calder sculpture of a soul escaping the sarcophagus while an angel stands guard, but my favorite monument belongs to the most handsome (and clearly, most modest) man in America at the time of his death.  The park-like setting offers a lovely refuge in the middle of a hectic city, exactly as was intended when Laurel Hill was established.

Probably because it was an age when people died much younger, the Victorians were far more accepting of death than we are today; they didn’t think of it as something to be “cured” by science, or legislated away by overprotective governments and ambulance-chasing lawyers. Instead, our forebears built cemeteries such as Laurel Hill and Highgate so they could commune with those who had departed, sometimes even picnicking at gravesites.

When I finally located those elusive Gregory folks, I didn’t dine with them, but I did sit down under a nearby tree to enjoy the pleasure of their company for a little while. I trust they were equally happy to entertain me.

Photo of Warner Monument courtesy of Fairmont Park Art Association